💸 Ken Paxton’s Texas win could cost Republicans nearly HALF A BILLION dollars 😳 | Chris Cillizza

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]The runoff Senate primary on Tuesday, May 26th, could wind up costing the National Republican Party $400 million.

[00:00:14]Yes, you heard that right. Almost a half a billion dollars could be spent just to get Ken Paxton and the House Republicans on the ballot in Texas across the line in November. It is a colossal amount of money. I will explain why that price tag is so high, but it is a colossal amount of money that has an impact not just on Texas, but on Republicans ability to compete financially in other states in the Senate and at the House level as they try to keep their majorities. This win by Paxton, and I'm not going to lay everything at Donald Trump's feet here.

[00:00:57]It Donald Trump endorsed Ken Paxton in the last week of the race. Given that Paxton won this race by 28 points over Cornin, I think Paxton was going to win anyway, but Trump certainly helped make that the case. This is a potentially a $400 million miscue uh for the Republican party as they seek to keep their House and Senate majorities. Let me I want to go through all of the numbers here, but it is a stunning stunning development that has impacts way beyond just Texas. Before I do that, very quickly, I hope you subscribe independent, authentic here every single day. I also hope if you are a subscriber, you check out my membership tiers. Just click memberships under my YouTube channel for as little as $2.99 a month. You can get exclusive content and you can support independent journalism.

[00:01:43]Okay, so here's what we know. Ken Paxton, the very controversial state attorney general, a guy who has been impeached by the Republican le state house in Texas, a guy who has had to settle corruption claims with former aids, a guy whose wife, who is a state senator, uh announced that he had broken the biblical bonds of marriage last summer, won overwhelmingly uh in the Tuesday runoff. He took 64% of the vote to 36% for longtime incumbent Senator John Cornin. So Paxton now moves to the general election where he will face Democratic state representative James Telerico. Okay.

[00:02:25]This is where the money starts to come in. Start here. Races in Texas are extremely expensive. It's a huge state with lots of different media markets that you have to buy ads in. And a lot of those are very expensive. Dallas and Houston being the two most expensive.

[00:02:40]Here's a couple comps in terms of what's been spent in past competitive Senate races. So, in 2024, okay, 2024, Ted Cruz, the incumbent Republican, beats Colin Allred, the uh Democratic nominee who was a member of Congress. He wins 5345.

[00:03:00]Cruz does in 2024. The total spend on that race was $210 million in 2024. $210 million of which Cruz spent about 105 million of it. So Cruz and his allies outspent all red but barely in that race. Go back six years.

[00:03:20]The last time Ted Cruz was up. Now this was Ted Cruz against Betto Oor. Very close race, closer than than uh the 2024 race in that race. And that was 8 years ago. $118 million was spent. Okay. So $118 million in 2018, $210 million in 2024, you would assume cost just keeps going up exponentially. So the floor of this race we assume is $210 million.

[00:03:46]Okay. Then in the primary and runoff, just on the Republican side, just John Cornin and uh Ken Paxton spent $128 million just on ads in the primary and the runoff that ended on Tuesday. $128 million. So more money spent just on ads in that primary than was spent on the entire Beto Aor versus Ted Cruz general election in 2018. By the way, of that 128 million, 92 million of it was spent by Cornin and Cornin's affiliates. So, three times as much by Cornin and Cornin affiliates, which gets me to the second fact. So, fact one, Texas is a very expensive state to run campaigns in.

[00:04:28]Fact two, Ken Paxton is a very bad fundraiser.

[00:04:33]Okay? He just does not raise a lot of money. He's he's he he he's always had he's always in Texas uh when you run for state offices like attorney general, they don't have any limits on candidate giving. So one person could give 10 million bucks. So if Ken Paxton could get one rich guy to give him 10 million bucks, he's got to tell him a million bucks. That's not how federal races work. There are limits. It's like $2,600 a person. You can only do so much in the first three months of 2026.

[00:05:03]So January 1 to March 31, James Telerico, the Democratic nominee, raised 27.5 million. Okay. In that same time, Ken Paxton raised $1.7 million for the entire race. And Ken Paxton's been in the race five months longer than James Telerico. He got it. Paxton got in like April 2025. Telerico didn't get in until September 2025. Terico total has raised $40 million and has $10 million on hand. He did at the end of of March.

[00:05:37]Paxton has raised $7.6 million and had $2.3 million on hand. So Paxton has raised less than a quarter total of what Telerico has raised. Now, my friend Kirk Bato, great reporter, editor-inchief of the Hotline, which is a political tip sheet here in Washington, did a great item about just this, how much it was going to cost Republicans to try to get uh Ken Paxton over the line if he was the nominee. the Senate Leadership Fund, which is the big Senate Republican super PAC, the the one that's affiliated with their leadership, the one that gets most of the money, they estimated before before Paxton won, they estimated that it would take 200 to $250 million just to get Paxton across the line, given that he's a bad fundraiser, given that he has tons of scandals surrounding him, given that Texas is a very expensive state. They they revamped that according to Kirk to 350 to400 million dollars because here's Kirk's word the extra investments House Republicans will need to make to protect their seats as Paxton likely drags down the GOP ticket. $400 million in outside spending just to keep those Texas House seats. There's about four that are competitive in the state to keep those seats on the Republican side and to get Paxton over the line against James Terico. That is a massive sum of money. And by the way, it's not just the Senate Leadership Fund saying this. On Tuesday, before he lost the race, John Cornin gave an interview to CNN's Manu Raju. This is what he said.

[00:07:17]He said, quote, "It'll cost several hundreds of millions," end quote, for Republicans to help Paxton win. He added this that this is Cornin that's money that could be and should be better spent in places like Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, and New Hampshire. If the Texas Senate seat is in jeopardy, that really jeopardizes our majority. Now, Cornin is self-interested in making that argument. Obviously, that was one of the ways he was trying to get people to vote for him. But he's not wrong, right?

[00:07:44]There is a finite amount of money that can be raised and spent in these races.

[00:07:50]money. If you are talking about, let's just say it's $200 million. $200 million that has to be spent to get John to try to get Ken Paxton over the line to beat James Telerico in Texas. That's money that can't be spent on John Cenounu. Or it's less money that can be spent on John Cenounu trying to win a Democratic open seat New Hampshire. It's money that might not be spent as much on the Michigan open seat that is currently held by Democrats. It's uh money that Mike Watley, the co-chair of former co-chair of the RNC, might not see in that North Carolina Senate race. It's over and over again. It's certainly money that Michelle Tofoya in Minnesota isn't going to see as she tries to win a Democratic open seat. The reality of the situation is if you are dumping all this money into Texas, they're going to have to. Again, hugely expensive state, very a state that Republicans really need to win to keep the majority, right? and a state where we know there's now a damaged nominee who's a poor fundraiser.

[00:08:46]If all that money is going over to that, it can't go to these other places, right? It's just there's just only so much money that can be raised and spent in a campaign. And again, if the floor is $210 million, which is what the 2024 race cost, and I think the the ceiling is five or 600 million total spending on both sides, it's just going to be very hard uh for Republicans to spend everywhere they want to and play offense because Paxton is going to require so much money and so much effort to even get him the 52 or 53% of the vote. This is a $400 million win uh by Paxton in that it's going to cost the party potentially $400 million bucks to try to win the win the seat in Texas, keep their Senate majority with Texas and keep their House majority with those Texas seats with Paxton potentially dragging down the ticket. Shout out to my friend Kirk Bad for pointing this out. I'll link to his piece uh in the comments section, but these these candidate decisions have real impact and uh this one may be the most expensive win that Republicans will see in maybe a generation of races. All right, that's it from me. As I say always, I hope you subscribe. Independent Authentic here every day. I do hope you check out the membership tab on my channel. Uh that's where you can uh support me for as little as $2.99 a month and get exclusive content and access to me. Um I also hope you like and comment on this video. That helps me if you're already if you're not a sub if you are a subscriber. It helps me with people who are not subscribers yet. Pushes my content out to them. Uh last thing in real life, word of mouth matters. Tell people what I'm doing here, why you like it, why you think they should sign up, why they should subscribe. Okay, everyone. Take care.